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Thursday, 21 September 2017

Are you wondering . . .

. . . about that red cow? I suspect you're not alone because I've had a few emails and messages about it.

In my initial post about quilted collage, I mentioned a failure (well, there were many more than one as I test drove the process of 'quilting' with Gelli prints). I mentioned then I should add some red cows to it.

The initial collage of the local Skimmerhorn mountains, annotated in jest, looked like this;

did you note the two pieces sliced on the end of the above photo? Well, I sliced to my heart's content, and rearranged the pieces like this:

and this,

and this.

Once I determined I liked the lines in the second version best, I glued the pieces to some cardstock and added a red cow. The landscape is much happier now, and I had a great deal of fun with it. I'm kind of hoping that we have some art 'fails' in the TAPS group so we can play with them there, too.

Now I'm wondering what you do with your art 'fails'. I'm so experimental that I have a ton of them, and I'm always looking for more ways reinvent pieces. What's your favourite technique? Share them in the comments below and I'll do a draw on September 30 - you might win a fail of mine.

30 comments:

Hi Win. I always have failures or leftover pieces and can't stand to throw them away. Sometimes I use them as backgrounds for other things, die cut them and use them as embellishments, rip them up and use them as part of a new Masterboard (which is probably my favourite) but I must say I like what you've done here! Many thanks to for the lovely comment you left me over at The Craft Barn, much appreciated. Angela xXx

Hi Win! It was so lovely to see a comment from you! Love how you rearranged your landscape and added the red cow! I like to cut up my fails too - once I made mosaic squares out of a sheet - another time I cut it up for ATC backgrounds. Nothing goes to waste! Have fun!

I LOVE the idea of a mosaic of 'failed' paintings, so that's likely to be my next trick. Many thanks! I've also done the ATC thing, and had a great deal of fun with that too. Thanks for stopping by to comment - it's lovely to see you moved into your new home!

Hi Win! Loving your red cow! I'm participating in a giraffe challenge right now....and I'm leaning heavily towards a blue giraffe. My "failures" add texture and depth to future pieces; a bit of collage, some gesso, a few liberal swipes of modelling paste and I have a new to me canvas to start on again. It's all just layers of life adding to the eventual creation. But now you've got me thinking about slicing up my canvases.

Thanks, Suzee - I just had to giggle when she finally materialized on the page...waaaaaaay silly. I'd LOVE to see that blue giraffe - please do email a link when you have it completed. And I'll want to see your sliced canvasses too! ;-)

HA! I love this! The rearranging process for failed paintings is very cool and I'll have to give that a whirl one day. And wow - the red cow takes it all to the next level. I can see why people were missing him! I sometimes toss my fails or tear them up. But mostly I just paint over them and save a canvas.

Great post!!! I love your red cow. Looks pretty happy in her new home. You asked what we do with out mistakes. Well, I have a 6 x 6 canvas that has had 4 projects on it and they all failed, now I am working on the 5th project on this poor canvas. I have the background the way I want it, but I don't know what to do to go further. I'll mull over for it while. Who knows, it may eventually have the 6th layer on it. hahaha

Given that I'm not a big fan of cows (a long story involving my mother, a cow patty and a too-big field), I'm pleased with how she looks here...it was great fun! I love it that you're using your projects over and over again...see me comment above about 20 layers deep. :D

Well I was going to let you borrow my purple cow but I can see that red was a much better option...well done my wild and crazy art friend, you saved another one. A big plus for digital art "NO FAILS" you just keep messing with it until it's making you happy in some way, or you press the delete button and start over, or I can keep the parts I like and add them to a new picture. On the downside if your computer crashes you wander around bored for three weeks until it's fixed...lolHave fun with your rescuing, although the pictures you think of as fails some of us would probably consider a worthy effort.

I'll take your purple cow and raise you a purple horse (http://windinnart.blogspot.ca/2012/01/horsefeathers.html), Deann...great minds think alike! I think your digital world is one I'd definitely appreciate for the lack of physical fails - well apart from your recent computer one that is. I find it hard to imagine going for three weeks without one! xo

I checked out your purple horse, it was so cute and as they said in Oz "Now that's a horse of a different color" My kind of horse I think animals should be any color even rainbow. I would make the world much more interesting.

Definitely needed a red cow! When I fail, I turn the page, or gesso over the entire thing and start again, or cut it into smaller pieces for collage. Recycle or move on. Failure is subjective in art and there'll be more of it the more you play.

I'm not loving most of my journal pages at the moment, but then I'm processing some stuff, so it's bound to come out. Turning the page, letting it go, and starting again is liberating.

What a cool technique you used here. I am not so very inventive.I let my not loved papers and backgrounds and all the failures sit in a box of scrap papers and the ugliest pages can do a good job when I use the negative painting technique on them.Or sometimes a scrap of an ugly piece can be used in a collage later -- so there are no fails in an artists life - there are just happy uuupses - and our muse can bring the failures to amazing BEAUTY in the end!!!